1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a case for transporting an article and more particularly to an article transport case that shields the article from ultraviolet light and humidity and protects it against damage due to impacts to which the case may be subjected during transport.
2. Description of the Related Art
When, for example, a toner cartridge for copying machines is to be transported, it is conventional practice, as shown in FIG. 9, to insert the toner cartridge B in a cylindrical cover C of aluminum vapor-deposited film and thermally fuse the ends of the cover C to form seal portions C1 to hermetically shield the toner from ultraviolet light and humid air and thereby prevent deterioration of toner quality. Furthermore, to protect the toner cartridge B against damage during transport, the ends of the aluminum vapor-deposited film cover C containing the toner cartridge B are fitted into shock absorbing blocks D and then a plurality of these toner cartridges B are put in a cardboard box in multiple tiers, and packed and delivered to a destination.
The shock absorbing block D is made by forming an impact absorbing material. The top and bottom surfaces of the shock absorbing blocks D are flat parallel surfaces and thus constitute stacking surfaces when the cartridges are stacked in multiple tiers in the cardboard box.
The packing and transport method described above has the following problems.
(1) Before putting the toner cartridges in a cardboard box, two processes are required. One is to insert the toner cartridges in aluminum vapor-deposited film covers and hermetically seal them, and the other is to fit the shock absorbing blocks over the ends of the aluminum vapor-deposited film cover. These processes are inefficient manual works and take a lot of time, making the packing work costly.
(2) After the toner cartridge is taken out of the cardboard box, two works are necessary: one is to remove the shock absorbing blocks and the other is to open the cover of the aluminum vapor-deposited film and take out the toner cartridge. These works are inefficient manual works, making the unpacking process time-consuming.
(3) Because the packing of the toner cartridge uses the aluminum vapor-deposited film cover and the shock absorbing blocks, the packing material cost is high.
(4) The shock absorbing blocks need to be large enough to be fitted over the ends of the aluminum vapor-deposited film cover, which means the block's volume is large and that the site for the packing work must be spacious enough to temporarily accommodate a large number of shock absorbing blocks.
Further, to temporarily accommodate the removed shock absorbing blocks during unpacking requires a large space. When the removed shock absorbing blocks are transported to a disposal site, the transport volume is large increasing the transport cost.